via WikiMedia Commons/Kbh3rd
St. Louis City Hall
In the 1992 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Cause and Effect,” Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew find themselves trapped in an endless time loop from which there seems to be no escape. Time after time, and unbeknownst to the crew, the Enterprise continuously collides with a mysterious vessel, causing the ship to explode, killing all aboard. Seconds later, the crew and ship have miraculously rematerialized, courtesy of the time loop, with only a subconscious knowledge of the previous disaster. The crew are trapped in the time loop for seventeen days, until finally Commander Data, the android, invents a method of sending a message back into the time loop, allowing the crew to learn from their past failures and ultimately freeing themselves from what they dub a “temporal causality loop.” The mysterious ship, now safely prevented from colliding with the Enterprise, is revealed to be the Bozeman, a vessel stuck in the time loop for over ninety years. The moral of the story is obvious: if you do not learn from past mistakes, you will repeat them over and over again.
Reading the newspaper recently, one might start to worry that the City of St. Louis is stuck in a temporal causality loop, unable to escape from what’s getting close to 90 years while its hapless crew—our elected officials—annihilate themselves and the municipal ship over and over again, always failing to impart a message to the future leaders. With just a little bit of copying and pasting, as well as some “find and replace,” substituting “soccer” for “football,” I realized I could practically put together another article today about our city officials’ quixotic quest for a major sports team with just the pieces of commentary I had written a year ago. Temporal causality loops could make my job incredibly easy if it weren’t so pathetic that many of our leaders have learned nothing from the Rams debacle.
Just to review, our city is desperately short on capital improvement funds, as our bridges crumble and streets turn to rubble; our police department is critically underfunded and missing literally hundreds of officers needed yesterday, not tomorrow, to patrol our streets; and the Board of Aldermen is still giving out tax abatements for projects that rich people probably would have built anyway. And of course, most glaringly, the North Side of St. Louis, based on my decade of observing, documenting and photographing its neighborhoods, is dangerously hemorrhaging population. The best defense our failed leadership can muster against its opponents is a straw man argument: “Opponents of taxpayer money for the soccer/football/baseball/hockey stadium don’t truly want to see St. Louis succeed.” Yes, I have actually heard someone say that.
The City is broke, but if we build just one more stadium, that will be the moment when the heavens open up, divine light will shine down, angelic choirs will sing, and St. Louis will enter a new age of prosperity, a renaissance. But speaking as a student of the Italian Renaissance, that flourishing of civilization did not occur because of one “silver bullet” commission. Filippo Brunelleschi completing the magnificent dome of Florence’s cathedral, 100 years in the making, did not magically start the Renaissance upon completion. Hard work, assiduous long-term investments in the economy, visionary leadership and the wisdom to select artists at least partially based on talent, turned Florence into one of the most famous cities in the world.
Right now in St. Louis, there are so many talented young men and women who could do amazing things with just $10,000. But instead of giving out relatively small bits of largesse to many people, our leaders give it to the latest “big idea,” which all seem to cost huge amounts of taxpayer money, since the wealthy promoters of said big idea never quite seem to have enough capital to get it done. Any competent financial advisor will never tell a client to put all of their financial eggs in one basket. Frankly, poor people are constantly lectured on the importance of delayed gratification and living within one’s means; when will the wealthy be expected to do the same for their next multi-million-dollar civic toy?
Speaking of ignoring advice that could spring St. Louis from its temporal causality loop, an amazing article written by David Nicklaus of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was published and then immediately forgotten back in May. Every mayor in the metro area should have this article wallpapered in 40-point font on the walls and ceiling of his or her office. To summarize: after billions of subsidies given out over the last couple of decades, St. Louis has seen zero, yes, zero retail growth. Take, for example, the opening of two outlet malls in Chesterfield; now the city’s eponymous and once-stable mall has been devastated financially, bankruptcy declared, and the creation of a giant white elephant in the suburb’s most visible location looms on the horizon. One must suspect a temporal causality loop has opened up over West County.
What is the solution? First, just as Captain Picard and his crew did, admit that something is wrong, and then set about fixing it. It took the Enterprise blowing up in space a few times before the temporal causality loop was first discovered, and a plan to escape it put in place. It will definitely take time, but St. Louis needs the humility to realize that once a correct course of action—not repeating the same stupid mistakes—is implemented, revitalization will not happen immediately. Just like during the Renaissance, it requires the nurturing of as many talents as possible, and never gambling on a single solution. It took 150 years for St. Louis to reach its apogee of success; it might very well take that long to come back.
One sign of hope that the status quo is changing is Board Bill 226, sponsored by Ald. Christine Ingrassia. Learning from the buffoonery surrounding the aldermanic debate for the failed football stadium last year, the proposed bill will leave public subsidies for the soccer stadium contingent to voter approval in April. The language of the bill is smart; it does not claim that it will move mountains. Also, it provides funding for job training and other long-term investments. That bill must pass, because voters should possess the right to choose how their taxes are used.
But more importantly, current and outgoing leaders need to stop worrying about their personal “legacy,” and focus on helping all St. Louisans. If they do that, then their hallowed place in history is assured.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
